Thermal management of computing equipment and devices is critical to their performance and reliability. The thermal management equipment used to keep these computing equipment and devices at a precise temperature consume large amounts of power.
Thermal management devices and methods exist for managing the temperature of a computing facility to provide an abundance of air at the right temperature for the computing equipment and devices housed within. For example, data center racks may be arranged to intake cold air at the fronts of the data center racks and exhaust hot air at the backs of the data center racks.
The effectiveness of these thermal management devices and methods are dependent upon the ability to move air through the data center racks. Doors exist that use sheet metal that is perforated to provide the ability to move air through the data center racks. However, the perforated sheet metal doors are limited to a maximum percentage of open perforated space because of the sheet metal punching process that forms the perforations. The limited perforation size reduces the perforated sheet metal door's efficiency to move air through the data center rack, thus consuming more power and costing more money. Further, because the perforated sheet metal doors are substantially flat, the perforated sheet metal doors limit the space available for the data center racks to which the perforated sheet metal doors are attached. Further, the perforated sheet metal doors are often expensive to manufacture.
Thus, there remains a need to develop new data center rack doors that move air efficiently through data center racks.